Many companies offer contact centres where consumers may contact the company for customer services. For example, the company may have a website. The company website may have a support page where the customer may be given several options for customer support. The website may allow the customer the option to call, send a text message, send an email or have a chat session with a customer representative.
Contact centres may maintain contact details for users, be they customers registered with the associated company, potential customers or any other form of user. The contact details may be stored in a database. The contact details may store one or more of a name, address, telephone number, postal address and email address, as well as other information for helping a contact centre agent locate information relevant, for example, to a registered user's account. For example, by storing a user's telephone number, the contact centre may contact the user with information of interest to them or respond to a query. The query may be received using any method, not necessarily by telephone. If the contact details comprise a mobile telephone number, the contact centre may send information by text message, e.g., using the short messaging service (SMS).
The contact details may be stored as part of a unified communications system. A unified communications system is one in which different forms of enterprise communication services are integrated, for example voice, instant messaging, presence information, audio, web and videoconferencing services, voicemail, to name but some. One or more platforms may be used for this purpose. In some cases, a unified communications system may allow an individual to send a message on one medium or service and to receive the same message on another medium or service.
A unified communications system may typically be implemented by users installing a client application on their own equipment, for example on their computer and/or mobile telephone, which enables communication with other users of the communications system via a centralised server running a corresponding server application. The contact details may be stored by, or in association with, the centralised server and the server application provides an interface whereby contact details can be entered.
Typically, applications for entering and maintaining contact details provide multiple fields for respective types of communication method, e.g., landline, mobile telephone, work telephone, email address etc. In the event that contact details for a first communication method (e.g., mobile telephone number) are stored against a different field (e.g., landline) then it can be time-consuming and cumbersome to update, involving multiple manual interactions with the application and processor. The application for example may not permit certain types of communication method for certain fields, e.g., text message cannot be send to a number stored in a landline field.
Similarly, other communications terminals such as mobile telephones store contact details, in the form of contact lists or phonebook applications. These may function in a similar way, providing multiple fields for respective types of communication method. They may have similar limitations in terms of limiting the ability of certain types of communications method to be applied to one or more fields. Maintenance of the contact details is similarly time consuming and cumbersome, involving multiple manual interactions with the application and processor.